Many people may see Robert Mahar as someone who’s “made it”. As an artist, maker, and designer (and any combination of those at once), Robert has established a name for himself as YouTube crafts instructor, designer of a line of paper goods with Knock Knock, and all-around craft connoisseur. In some circles, he’s even considered a crafty celebrity in his own right.

This year in particular, he was featured as a contestant on the hit NBC reality show, “Making It”, hosted by comedians Amy Poehler and Nick Offerman. If you haven’t seen it already, I highly recommend it. By many account, being on the show would have “made it” for Robert, with brands and big business deals lining up at the door as soon as the first episodes aired.

But as you’ll hear in the interview, this was absolutely not the case. In my interview with Robert, we peek into the production process for filming the show and his own experience working with the other contestants and the celebrity hosts, the efforts he made leading up to the show airing on prime time network TV, what he’s been doing since the show aired, and how he’s continued to hustle and leverage his 15 minutes of relative fame into what’s next for his business.

Listen to the latest episode below!

Episode Guests

"Robert Mahar is an artist and designer who develops and teaches imaginative crafts and clever do-it-yourself projects through high-quality video tutorials and in-person workshops. He was also a contestant on the inaugural season of NBC’s creative competition show Making It. The crafty content he develops and presents to his YouTube viewers, online audience and workshop attendees is often rooted in nostalgia. His talent for reinventing old-school crafts with a decidedly modern twist is evident in the gift line he continues to develop with Knock Knock and has gained him a loyal following.

With an education in studio arts and art history, he has worked in a variety of creative fields including 13 years as an appraiser of modern and contemporary art. When he’s not working in his downtown Los Angeles studio, Robert obsesses over vintage craft books and schemes ways to make it big as a doughnut connoisseur.

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